What's the word on the Christopher Bataille novel Absinthe? Any relation to postmodern badboy Georges Bataille? The translator is the Poetry Editor for The Paris Review, so I know quite a bit about him. Any reviews? comments?

I just read this book. It was an interesting read. i like how the story wraps around a distiler in a mysterious wizard-like fashion. Plus the story moves backward in forward in time a lot. I ended the book thinking I should read it again to understand it better.

I have to say it it told so matter-of-factly in the first person. One may not realize it is fiction if it did not say so on the cover. It did go overboard on the effects, but then again who knows what else was in that brew.

Also, I have never heard of absinthe laced suger cubes. I would like to know more about this concept. There was just a few mentions of the spoon ritual.

I thought it was a fun afternoon's read, that created an almost dreamlike mood, so that I almost felt a little drunk after reading it.

Like Helfrich said last year, the weird thing is that it makes it seem like gentiane is the primary component of absinthe! Why would somebody who obviously knew at least a lot about the roots and culture of absinthe, if not the actual distilling of it, be so wildly wrong about something so basic?

I was a little thrown by the flower reference. I did not really get a since of its use as a primary ingredient, but as a notable ingredient. I did get mention of the wormwood component which was really the unspoken ingredient.

i wondered if the extreme sinsations experienced in the book were somehow a factor of the poison flower instead of the absinthe. There was much mystery wrapped around the distiller Jose and his most unsantitary process with countless unknown ingredients. I made me think about the article on this site about the wormwood not being the cause of madness, but the unknown other additions to the brews.